What the Bible Says About a Marriage Falling Apart

Join Lysa TerKeurst; her Licensed Professional Counselor, Jim Cress; and Proverbs 31 Ministries’ Director of Theological Research, Dr. Joel Muddamalle, for conversations about how to keep moving forward in a healthy way when relationships in your life are unraveling.

Hi, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Therapy and Theology with my friends, Proverbs 31 ministries, Director of Theological Research, Doctor Joel Mule.
So happy to have you today.
It’s gonna be an amazing discussion and licensed professional counselor and also my personal counselor, Jim Cress.
Before we get into our conversation, I want to remind you about the listener guide we’re making available for each episode of season three.
We know these episodes can be a lot to digest.
So this is a resource my team created to help you practically apply what you learn, whether you’re listening to Therapy and Theology podcast or watching us on the Proverbs 31 ministries youtube channel.
We’ve linked the free listener guide for you in the show notes.
Now, in this installment of Therapy and Theology, we’re going to cover some really major topics.
And I want to say right up front that we’re gonna be talking about hard things, hard relational dynamics and some of what we’re gonna be covering is divorce.
Now, the reason I want to say this right up front is because I loved being married and I am very pro marriage the way God designed it.
I think it’s amazing and it shattered my heart into probably a million pieces to walk through a divorce, which I refer to Jim gave me this verbage as the death of a marriage.
So I want to clearly state up front here. We are going to be talking about some hard topics.
If there’s little ears listening, you may want to entertain them another way.
So we’re gonna dive right in and we want to take a biblical look.
It’s not just gonna be an experiential look, but we are gonna really take a biblical and theological look at some really hard relational dynamics.
Today, we’re gonna be talking about divorce and Joel, the reason I’m looking at you and I’m looking at you too is because I think one of the number one questions that people ask when they’re in incredibly hard marriage dynamics, not just marital marital difficulties.
Because if you put two centers together to try to manage kids and finances and life, you’re gonna have marriage difficulties and those are good reasons to study.
Some good resources, go to counseling, get some wise advice.
But when that shifts into some destructive patterns, some behaviors that are far apart from God’s design of marriage, then sometimes people start asking what are the biblical grounds for divorce?
I know this is a big topic and the heavy subject, but I’m really thankful that we have your theological wisdom.
Yeah. Well, I think first one of the things that we need to first establish is what is marriage.
Um And what is God’s ideal, his intent for marriage.
And one of the things Lisa and Jim that I’ve noticed is um over the course of time and there’s actually some historical proof connected to the Bible and, and translations and uh really good Godly people that want to value marriage in a higher way.
But at times, here’s the challenge that can happen.
Um Sometimes we can take the institution of marriage, which is a Godly, really good thing.
But the institution of marriage is built upon two image bearers, a man and a woman who reflect the image of God, which means that they have in inherent dignity and worth and value.
And unfortunately, I think what’s happened is we’ve taken the Institute of Marriage and we’ve actually at times elevated it over and over these two image bearers, they’re supposed to reflect the value and worth of God.
And when we do that, and we take the Institute of Marriage and we leave it at a higher place than the actual image bearers that are within that marriage.
And the consequence of that is actually a dishonoring of both what God intended marriage to be and also the image of God that these two people bear.
Um And so I think that’s the, the first thing that we kind of need to start with.
Now, the second question is what are the grounds for divorce.
Well, there’s a rich Old Testament context that really gives us a lot of information that Ancient Israelites um had verses in the Bible, uh that they taught one of them.
If you’re taking notes, Deron 24 1 through four is one that we’ll spend a lot of time uh looking at, but I wanna start with this, that marriage is the Hebrew word uh be, which is also translated as covenant.
Here’s one of the challenges that takes place when we hear the word covenant, I don’t know.
I’m gonna throw you guys on the spot.
What do you think of when I say covenant, I think of a really significant and important contract.
And when you think about the Bible typically, what do you think about covenant relationship to between God and his people?
Perfect. OK. This is, and I always think of the, the, the seriousness of like a blood covenant, which is actually in the sexual part of marriage as well if you look at it.
Yeah, exactly. So here’s what’s so interesting.
What we’ve done is we’ve actually conflated, at least to your point, we’ve conflated uh covenant that is unilateral between God and man.
And we’ve imposed that view of covenant onto the marriage covenant between two imperfect humans and this is dangerous, right?
So what we need because between two people, it’s bilateral, it’s not unilateral.
So, wait, I want you to pause here because I think this is important. Why is this important?
Like why does this matter? Yeah, because God’s ability and his character and his perfect nature allows him to forgive in a way and to always leave room the possibility for reconciliation to pursue these things.
Because God is love, he is righteous and He is just so, so God is recon a possible possibility no matter what, no matter what because it’s gone.
But in a bilateral relationship, reconciliation is condition And this and this is why it’s important that word for covenant that the best English word that we probably should use which people are like, oh, is that the best?
But wouldn’t it is the best translation? It’s actually contract. And this is how the ancient world understood marriage.
They would actually write a marriage contract in the same way that you’d have two parties that come together and each party has a responsibility.
They’ve got rules, they’ve got stipulations and catch this. There are consequences.
If those stipulations are unmet on both sides, we’re back to boundaries again.
A boundary without a consequence is a mere suggestion that that’s exactly right.
So now we get into this question of, well, what are the grounds for uh for a biblical divorce because sometimes divorce happens and it doesn’t follow in these biblical kind of guidelines.
But I want to talk about what the rabbis, um the, the teachers of the ancient Israelites, how they categorized the grounds for biblical divorce.
There were, there are three categories that they would use. And underneath that can flesh out um, different distinctions.
But these are the three categories. The first one is unfaithfulness, unfaithfulness. Now, it’s really interesting.
I, and, you know, this is what I do for fun.
Last night I went through Ancient, near Eastern contracts as many as I could.
You know, because you know what, that’s just what I wanna do on an evening at home.
I just want to go through ancient near East contracts. That, that’s how I do that while you’re watching Basket.
I was gonna say it knows me really well, I, I was watching the Lakers game last night to watch the number two all time, greatest player of all time, lebron James.
Um But the interesting thing about many, many, many an engineer Eastern contracts and even many Greco Roman.
So when I say an engineer, Easter, I’m talking about Old Testament.
When I talk about Greco Roman, I’m talking about New Testament.
What is the commonality is unfaithfulness is almost always not present? So we ask why, why is that?
It’s because it’s, it’s assumed it’s like the oxygen that we breathe, you know, uh that I am thinking about breathing and doing the breathing without actual like intentionality.
It’s just a natural response in the same way when these marriage contracts were written, unfaithfulness is a given.
So if you are unfaithful through adultery, that instantly breaks the marriage contract and make it breaks the marriage. OK.
What do you mean? It was a given, it was understood in that time, it was a normal ethical obligation and responsibility.
So in other words, you’re saying that they expect it or they expected faithfulness, they expected faithfulness.
And so in the presence of unfaithfulness, they understood that, that, that unfaithfulness broke the contract of faithfulness.
So it’s almost like why would I need to write in something that is already present as the fabric of our society?
Is that? Are you saying that it was instantly?
So it was understood that if there was unfaithfulness in fidelity, that it instantly broke the contract, you didn’t have to say I’m breaking it or it broke it broke it, it broke it absolutely.
Now, there are two other um categories that are really important. The rabbis teach on this.
Uh one of them is material neglect and the other one is emotional neglect.
So you’ve got these three umbrellas and underneath it, it can be played out into different ways, material neglect.
Now, I’m talking about an ancient world that was patriarchal like we can’t get around that.
And so there are social kind of responsibilities that a man and a woman would have.
But even in this setting, super amazing, super important that there was this idea that both parties, both man and woman because they’re made in the image and likeness of God require the dignity, their dignity value and birth, which means they both had a responsibility to each other.
So, the husband’s responsibility from a material standpoint is to provide food, to provide clothing, um from an emotional standpoint, to provide love, um to provide the nec necessity of emotional intimacy, um sexual intimacy in that area.
And the same was true for the woman back to the man that these things were supposed to be there.
Now, the ancient rabbis understood that if material neglect was present and you’re not talking about just like, oh, I wish we had a bigger house.
No, we’re talking basic material needs, basic material needs.
I mean, I’m talking about um yeah, like is there food on the table?
Is there um a safe place to, to live?
And so by the way, I thought I heard you say, I’m sure this needs to be edited out because I must have not been listening.
They were required men were patriarchal not to provide some kind of emotional connection. Oh, yeah, handed that out.
That is absolutely true. And so they understood and actually, we’ll look at a different passage in Exodus that understood these three things that love was, was a requirement.
Love was a requirement. So love is emotional.
It’s both, so we were seeing this duality, it is both physical and it is both emotional.
Now, the rabbi, so the like, where, where does a divorce? When is it valid?
Um The rabbis understood that one of the things that is really important is this thing called a certificate of divorce.
So if you go to Deuteronomy uh 21 versus one through four, it talks about having a certificate of divorce.
Why is this really important? Because in this society and in this uh understanding that um in order for a divorce to be valid that the man or the woman has to be able to show, hey, one of these two things has taken place unfaithfulness, material neglect or emotional neglect.
And in the presence of that, the rabbis would step in almost like a legal system and say for, especially for the woman who’s oftentimes the most innocent and vulnerable and the victim in this situation, she needs protection here, you know, and so they would step in and actually put a penalty on the husband until the husband actually gave a certificate of divorce, the certificate of divorce by handing it to the woman, it gives her dowry back, which is financial stability.
That’s what they came into the marriage through.
And it made it possible for the woman to get remarried if she chose to get remarried. Ok.
So I’ll listen, this is new and deep and I’m so thankful you’ve done the theological heavy lifting so that we can better understand this.
So here’s my fear when you say this because remember I am pro marriage, I think we all are very pro marriage and pro God’s design for marriage.
So where the unfaithfulness seems pretty crystal clear you know, um what feels a little squishy to me is the material and emotional because, you know, I, I think there’s a lot of talk around um the need for us to acknowledge emotional abuse and I 100% agree with that.
Um Emotional abuse exists, it is devastating and it can also because our trauma not only happens to us, it happens in us.
So it can also really come about with physical consequences, emotional abuse.
Um And so I know that it exists and I’m so glad that we’re addressing it here, but there’s a big difference between somebody being emotionally abused and somebody just saying, I don’t really feel that love.
Yeah. And so how, how like I just want to make sure like how, how are people quantifying this?
Like what or qualifying it? Like what is the parameter?
Because it feels like that could get people into the mindset.
Well, he doesn’t make me feel loved the way that I want to feel loved and then quickly piece out on a marriage.
So let’s, let’s read this in Deuteronomy 24 1 through four.
This is what Moses says if a man marries a woman, but she becomes displeasing to him because he finds something.
And if you’re highlighting, you know, taking notes, he because he finds something indecent, the Hebrew Word is about her.
So what is this indecency? This becomes a big question.
He may write her a certificate of divorce hand it to her and send her away from his house.
Now, this gets to the very question Lisa, that you’re asking, what is the context of this emotional neglect and what is the context of material neglect?
Now, the rabbis and I’m gonna get to Jesus because really, we need to filter everything at the end of the day through how Jesus understood this.
So we’re gonna start with the rabbis um in this first century, because Jesus understood the background that the rabbis established in oral tradition and in the practice of the people of Israel, then Jesus comes in and actually defines exactly how we ought to think about this.
This is um really interesting for unfaithfulness, for adultery, for unfaithfulness, the marriage contract was broken.
So that was kind of clear cut, you know, um Now, Deuteronomy 24 1 through four, the way the Hebrew is structured.
And this is really important for Jesus later on the way the Hebrews structured is neutral.
It, it could say that he may get a divorce or it could say that he must one is another and there is a huge difference.
Now, this meant that different rabbis and different teachers had to make an interpretive decision a about that.
Um And so then what happened for the rabbis is the way they separated, emotional and um and material neglect is that the first option for them in the presence of these things was not the contract broken.
They actually established financial penalties in the presence of this.
So we’re talking, they were taking steps, they were taking progressive steps, steps, leaps, not leap to divorce and they put the onus on the offender.
Ok? So Jim, I, I wanna get back to what you’re talking about but Jim, I know what it feels like to sit in your office and to be wrestling in the deepest part of my heart, my soul with acknowledging that I was in a marriage that there were things happening that were not honoring of God’s design for marriage.
You know, there was infidelity and there there was other things that were present that were extremely hard.
And at the same time, I, I remember very much sitting in your office and thinking two thoughts.
I don’t want to be a divorced woman.
And what will this do to the future of my family?
Like I don’t want to lose my family.
And at the same time, I was having to acknowledge this is not sustainable.
And so I would imagine you see women and maybe even some men because I don’t, I don’t want to think it’s always just the woman who’s crying.
It could sometimes be the man that’s heartbroken in their man. Absolutely.
And so just speak to the heart of that person from a therapeutic standpoint, any wisdom that you would have.
You know, actually the words of Saint Paul come to mind. Uh and I’m gonna borrow them.
So even if it’s a little out of context, I’m gonna borrow, I have fought the good fight.
I’ve kept the faith. I’ve finished the course as we talked about in my terms, it’s often the, uh, the death, a divorce is the death of a marriage.
You know, at least I want people to try to work their way out of the marriage if they’re going to be getting out of a marriage.
to me, you are a perfect example of that.
And here in North Carolina where we live, the state wants you to take a year, actually, a year and a day, slow things down.
Post divorce, regret is very, very high and indeed work your way out of the marriage.
That also gives the spouse even if they’re what we often call the offending spouse or the addicted or unfaithful spouse a chance to say, hey, are you gonna go do your work?
Certainly, or which we’ve talked about? Are you going to truly repent?
I like that word Meno in Greek, it means I don’t just stop.
I stop and I turn 1 80 you see me moving back toward health.
Psalm 51 a broken and you’ll see it a broken and contrite heart and spirit. God will not despise.
By the way, I believe that it may be implied that he does despise the opposite of that.
So you say, is there a Brokenness?
Is there a willingness and it gives some time because if a person is unfaithful in my experience more anecdotally, if they’re in addiction experientially is within a few months, you’ll find a tell tale sign.
They’ll go back to it because I can hold their breath for a month or two if they’re not completely broken and contrite and truly walking a healing road of repentance.
So I do think it’s also important to state um that with my experience and I’m not putting this on anybody else because I don’t want to tell you what to think.
I want to give you a lot to think about.
And that’s really what we always want to do here with therapy.
And theology is just to give you some things to think about and answer some questions to the best of our ability.
But this is not a prescriptive episode for you.
This is us giving the facts and in my experience, um I wanted to leave room for God to move.
That’s just, yeah, and that’s just what I felt was really important.
Um For me, it was, it was for me and say more about that, that is a stunning, so powerful comment because I think the average human mind, at least at one level could go well.
You’re even when I was setting up, you’re doing that for a spouse and you said no, I was actually doing that for me, would you?
Yeah, because I remember you saying Lisa, the rate of post uh, divorce regret is really, really high.
I didn’t want to carry the weight of regret and I knew what would comfort me if the divorce happened and it did wind up happening.
I wanted on those nights where I laid in bed and I was so intensely lonely and sad and wondering if there was any kind of a future for me at all.
I needed to know that I had left room for God to move that I left no stone unturned.
Now, did I do that in close proximity to this person?
No, there was a separation and separation sometimes can be a wise and possibly even healthy choice.
You know, um we talked about taking steps, not leaps.
And for me being separated created a different kind of stability for me because the there was infidelity involved and because of that, I was constantly getting triggered if I was in close proximity to this person.
And so it was crucial that there was some space so that I could give myself the ability to regulate, to take a step back and to not constantly live in high intensity trauma mode.
Well, you just went very importantly, read my mind uh about the the actual uh the power, the necessity of that separation versus get out.
I don’t want to be with you is the sense there can be trauma bonding that goes on.
I can be confused. It’s a trigger rich environment that I lose myself.
I lose my healthy thinking by coming over here and separating for solitude therapy, counseling, biblical counseling, uh, to be over here and to kind of just get my wits about me because let’s face it sometimes if a person has been in a relationship that long.
My log, I used, they’re either being lied to the person’s omitting stuff.
Like, I wonder if they’re telling the truth or, gee, they’re being gas lit or gas lighted, that’s that sacred space to come over here.
And, you know, I, I just want to make this even as much uh from a therapy standpoint than a theology standpoint.
Although I do believe it’s theologically accurate, I want to be aware if someone is out and what do you use that word, right?
Sin, if they’re out in darkness, if they are out in, who knows, even strongholds or being influenced, believe it or not even demonically that if they’re coming back in your house and bringing it in, whether you have Children around or not, that, that energy that, that, that whole vibe of them coming in.
Sometimes it’s like, I don’t want to be around that particular.
If they’re just activated and acting out in their addiction and, or infidelity, I don’t want to be around that.
And you touched on this lightly.
I want to be, of course, very clear to say because I’ve seen this a ton to say to women and they may feel well, he repented one night or he seemed better is if there’s been infidelity and I’ll say that whether the woman’s been in has infidelity, which happens or the man, then there should be a time.
Certainly. I mean, talk to the CDC of sexual abstinence and saying, well, it looked like everything he repented or she repented one night because then you’re dealing with STD S and S T I s and that can be incredibly dangerous.
Yeah. And I know this can feel hard, devastating, maybe even sometimes impossible.
And I remember thinking, I don’t want this and it feels so complicated and so impossible.
I mean, I’m, I’m a Christian Bible teacher and I’m thinking about, you know, having a separation.
I mean, all of it felt impossible.
There’s always gonna be circumstances that make it feel devastating and it should feel devastating because a marriage is that precious to God.
But at the same time, just like Joel was saying, I’m an image bearer of Christ.
And so it was really crucial to me to have a separation so that I could get my wits about me.
Also. I think what can feel complicated in this is, you know, when Jesus said we’re to forgive 70 times seven and we’re gonna touch on this in another episode, the whole principle of biblical forgiveness, what is it and what it is not.
But here’s what I wanna say when Jesus is giving us that instruction to forgive 70 times seven because I know Jesus is about preserving life and caring for the individual.
Jesus would never have taught that in the context that we’re to stay close to someone who’s devastating us, brutalizing us, hurting us.
In other words, we are required to forgive, but maybe we need to create enough distance between us and the person hurting us or harming us.
So that from a distance, we can forgive 70 times seven, even if that person doesn’t change and we can still be safe and we can still be, you know, just able to move forward in our day without the constant devastation of the actions of another person, we can’t even control so we can forgive from afar reconciliation, like you said, is conditional.
Yeah, I think that’s so important and I want to circle back on what the both of you were talking about in terms of leaving space and um taking steps and not leaps.
Really? I said earlier, I wanna get to Jesus and what is?
And a lot of people will take a passage like Matthew 19 7 through nine where the Pharisees come to Jesus and they ask him about divorce and Jesus has some very specific things that he says that a got you question it, it like a got you question.
But first I think we need to realize that Jesus is rooted in a specific social and historical setting just like you and I are like we live in North Carolina.
There, there’s a, a social constriction even that’s placed upon us in, in the area of marriage and divorce. Jesus.
In the same situation after the rabbis had come together.
By the time of Jesus, there are two trains of thought that were taking place when it came to divorce.
One was the school of Shami and the school of Shami understood that divorce was only a matter of indecency.
This is the 24 1 through four verse. And that indecency is adultery.
It, it deals with sexuality, sexual impropriety and what is indecency, uh, adultery, you know.
Uh, and I’m gonna talk exactly about what adultery um, is in the, uh, Jewish context.
But um, it’s, it’s cheating on your spouse, you know.
Um, but there’s another school and the school is the school of Halal.
The school of Halal understood indecency as two things as both indecency.
But also a matter because technically that Hebrew word could mean two things.
So what they said was, yeah, sexual sin for sure. But also any matter.
So they actually progressively pushed divorce as a possibility for any situation that you want.
In fact, there’s one um study in the MNA or writing the, the MHA is basically all the oral tradition of the rabbis put together and this is wild.
Uh, the says that um uh that it could, yeah, uh a divorce could be sought even if she, this is the quote from the MNA.
Spoiled a dish. Ok. So does this get corrected?
Yeah, Jesus corrects it that I want to hurry up and get to the part where Jesus does correct it because we are not endorsing.
We are not that, but I want to point that out because this is where scriptures get weaponized.
This is where things go sideways. And what Jesus does in Matthew 19 7 through nine.
I’m gonna read the verses and then we’re gonna get exactly into what Jesus says about divorce and, and what we should do or how we should go about it.
But he says, um, why? Then this is the Pharisees asked Jesus why?
Then they asked him, did not, those are the words, did Moses command us to give divorce papers and to send her away.
This is a quote from 24.
Uh And then Jesus and then he told them, Jesus told him no, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of the heart.
Now, this is an important phrase because of the hardness of your hearts, but it was not like that from the beginning.
So what Jesus is doing is he’s actually contra, he’s actually correcting that halal view that uh for any reason, you can just go ahead and, and, and do this and, and Jesus is saying exactly what the both of you said don’t make leaps start with steps.
So he says, Moses doesn’t say, um that you must in, in this situation, but he allows it for the sake of protection.
But the Lynch pin phrase here is, and I think this gets to some of this question and I know Jim, you’re gonna have a lot to say about this from a therapeutic standpoint.
But how do you know when enough is enough? You know, like, what does that look like?
Well, when Jesus uses this phrase, the hardness of heart, um this word is actually connected to the Hebrew phrase in 24 1 with indecency.
And it’s also connected to Jeremiah 44, which talks about stubbornness.
So when Jesus says a hardness of heart, what is he actually talking about? He’s talking about unrepentant sin.
He’s talking about an individual who, who doesn’t just sin and then does it turn a shoe in Hebrew is to repent and to, to return back to God.
But he goes, I’m good with my sin. I’m happy to live in my sin.
And in fact, all of y’all better deal with it or they live a double life or they live a double life.
There’s, there’s a, there’s an extreme like repentance here and secretly they’re still acting out over here. That’s right.
So what this means is what Jesus gets out in the this uh in this text is Jesus leaves room for divorce in the case of the offender who is showing a hardness of heart who is unrepentant?
Um And that unrepentant is persistent and stubborn sin.
Can I look through real quick that I’ve never asked you this whole time. I’ve known you.
But Matthew 19 happens to follow Matthew 18, which is a classic church discipline passage.
And you talk about, we talk about slowing down the steps if someone sins against you.
Hey, you need to talk about this.
If not a couple of witnesses, which we know goes back even to the Old Testament and then take it to the church if not treat him like a nonbeliever.
But there are steps in Matthew 18, not tying that directly to accidentally to divorce.
But there’s a, there’s a premise there being able to go there and say, hey, will you change?
Will you do that? Bring it to the church? I understand there are house churches and all that, that’s different.
But, um, or smaller groups probably, but there’s something there that you need some steps to look at.
I think that’s a good example, don’t you? Absolutely. I think that’s really good, Jim.
And I want to ask you about this hardness of heart because again, this is an area that can get kind of squishy.
And I think it would be good for you to tell us some phrases that are indicative of a person’s hardness of heart.
I’ll throw out a couple. Um, one is you’re making this so much of a bigger deal than it really needs to.
I mean, my goodness, it was one time, you know, or, um, why do you keep bringing this up like it happened.
I said, I was sorry, why do you keep bringing it up?
And again, that points to the reality that there may be a fact of what happened, but there’s always an impact of how that impacted you and it’s in that impact, of course, the person hurt, they’re gonna, they, they would, it cost them something emotionally, it maybe even cost them physically or sexually.
So I think when the sin is minimized to quickly get over it, um, I think that could be a problem.
Now, we certainly don’t want to keep berating somebody.
If somebody is repentant and they are humbly seeking, um, restoration then berating them is not the answer either.
But some of those statements I feel like are such an indication that something, there’s a hardness of heart that is just not gonna be good for this situation.
Yeah, I like that even I’m, as you’re talking, I’m seeing steps yet again and, um, before there is repentance, I see no other evidence.
Otherwise, then there needs to be confession that Greek word we’ve talked about on this podcast before to say the exact same thing as I like to say.
Quite frankly, even if there’s use of pornography, I’ve committed adultery in my heart there.
I want to name that the confession of saying this is what I’ve done.
Well, I don’t know if I would call it that. So we’re forget repentance.
We can’t even land the plane on confession. This is what I’ve done.
I also of all places, you know, I love Nehemiah to go back to when Sam ballet and Tobia were are coming.
They’re just rebuilding the walls. A very simple point almost like it just into the text which is he said they’re going to come and try to harm us, Sam ballot to buy other armies, they’re going to come try to kill us and harm us.
Then this line slips in and to cause confusion among us. So that is an issue.
If you see someone trying to mess with your mind, you know, the truth, you know, I found the evidence or I’ve seen, well, it’s not, which is classic guy lighting, right?
Yeah. What you’ve seen there. It really wasn’t that or I only did it one time and sometimes many wives I’ve worked with especially will have basically empirical evidence.
No, we caught you or you’re doing this.
I know and the person says, well, it’s not what you think it is.
So the smoke and mirrors thing to cause confusion.
And I think for our viewers and our listeners to be able to think, do you feel like for a moment?
I know what’s going on here. I’m pretty sure this has gone on and even evidence based.
But this person, the offending party is trying to cause confusion.
I think that’s a sign of a non repentant heart and I think it’s more than just non repentant.
I think, quite frankly, Scott Peck wrote a book about this. I think it’s actually evil. Yeah.
And you know what’s so complicated about that is even when you see evidence, that something isn’t right.
You taught me that where there’s smoke, there is a fire because my heart so desperately didn’t want what I thought I was seeing evidence of, to be true.
I wanted him to say everything’s ok. You were faithful to your side of the contract.
It’s a breach of contract. When this stuff goes, let’s talk contract, it’s a breach of contract.
So your operating system and I’ve said to you, you know, this many times, Lisa, you are such a woman of integrity.
It’s one of my favorite parts of you wholeness, not parts alienated off that wholeness is really what integrity means to me.
And so with your walking in integrity, you’re doing that.
If there’s a breach of contract, I watch you hold up. It doesn’t mean you’re perfect.
That’s not the point, but you held up your side.
I’ve seen so many times this person says I’m really holding up my part of the contract and they’re not.
So even that gets rather slippery and people might be like, wait, wait, does God do this?
I don’t think God does this.
I just want to point out like, um, you know, God divorces Israel throughout the Old Testament.
Like look at the book of Hosea. Does that mean, what it says, I mean, he divorced Israel.
I mean, look at 32 8 to 9.
Uh the, the after impact of the Tower of Babel in the midst of rebellion, you know, even before Israel was in Israel, he divorces the people uh and allots them to different places.
And so, um this is language and this is an understanding that is consistent throughout the scriptures and yet it, it, it is that God’s tendency, his heart is this um acceptable endurance with, with the hope and with the vision of actual repentance and actual change.
And we remember that it’s God’s capacity for forgiveness and redemption and, and reconciliation is unilateral.
But you know, with people, it’s not as bilateral which we already talked about.
And so our reconciliation is very conditional.
But yeah, I remember the day that we were sitting at my kitchen table and you said, Lisa, you do realize that God divorced Israel and it hit me like a ton of bricks that I had been carrying this resistance to divorce that I don’t even know where it all came from.
I hope out of a pure heart, it came from how serious I was when I take my marriage when I took my marriage vows.
But there was this heaviness that I thought if I divorce him, I am going to carry the weight almost like the Christian scarlet letter.
And when you said that it, it lifted something in me and I just thought, I think God loves me enough to have provided a way out when I am in this devastating relationship.